Our kids are diving into how our communities have changed over time. We looked at how our local community has changed physically, with the influx of more people, homes, schools, establishments, etc. We focused on what would influence people to migrate into our area, and found that jobs and industries, the open-mindedness of people, recreation, physical landscape and weather, and the pride of how we care for our environment all impact our changing community. We also looked at how our local leaders play a pivotal role in how our community functions. Dr. Jeff Rose became an instantaneous rock star with our second graders. On a more global scale, we looked at how people, events, and conceptual things like money and voting, also influence and impact how we think, behave, believe and act within our own communities.

What are some learning engagements that have been done in this unit?

We started off this unit by examining what influenced our our families to migrate to America. We learned that most were seeking opportunities for a better life here. Many were able to trace their lineage back several generations and found that their lives were incredibly hard.

We then looked at the differences of the past and present within our Beaverton community. Students were able to research and find archived photos from more than 100 years ago of all the different places that we currently drive and walk to on a regular basis.

We also did lesson rotations with all five teachers looking at what influences would bring people to our community to live. This allowed all the second graders to interact with our teaching team and all the different activities we planned for them.

Researching on the iPads was very engaging. We did a few days worth of work on iPads, going to kid friendly websites through the BSD library resources, and finding a plethora of information on influential people, events, and conceptual things.

Our last activity will culminate what we've been working toward for the past six weeks. We'll be putting all that we've learned into writing and designing a non-fiction book about these influences and how it's impacted us personally and as a community overall. How has this unit connected to other subject/content areas?For this unit, we've had to rely heavily on reading about influences, writing about them as an informational pieces, math to calculate population growth within a community, and technology to do a lot of the research for this unit.

Have there been many connections to the Learner Profile, Action, etc.?

A LOT of our discussions revolved around attitudes and learner profile attributes. One big discussion we had recently was on Adolf Hitler. They brought this name in as an influential person. Questions that came out of it was how can a bad person be influential? Or how can someone like that influence me personally? We talked about how an influential person can impact us either positively or negatively, or both. They came to the conclusion that bad influences can teach us to be more respectful, empathetic, and tolerant toward others in the face of adversity. What a powerful life lesson to learn when it comes from someone's example of hate and malice! Many students went home and researched more on their own to find more influential people, conceptual things, or events that have changed or impacted how we think, behave, believe and act.